which has been exhausted by the ablest pens. | lieve Omnipotence of part of his burden, by asBut as a work of this nature seems to require signing to his care only such a portion as may that so important a subject should not be over- be more easily managed, seem to have no adelooked, it is intended to notice in a slight man-quate conception of his attributes. ner a few of those many difficulties and popular objections which are brought forward against the use and efficacy of prayer, even by those who would be unwilling to be suspected of impiety and unbelief. There is a class of objectors who strangely profess to withhold homage from the Most High, not out of contempt but reverence. They affect to consider the use of prayer as derogatory from the omniscience of God, asserting that it looks as if we thought he stood in need of being informed of our wants; and as derogatory from his goodness, as implying that he needs to be put in mind of them. They forget that infinite wisdom puts him as easily within reach of all knowledge, as infinite power does of all performance; that he is a Being in whose plans complexity makes no difficulty, variety no obstruction, and multiplicity no confusion; that to ubiquity distance does not exist; that to infinity space is annihilated; that past, present, and future, are discerned more accurately at one glance of his eye, to whom a thousand years are as one day, than a single moment of time or a single point of space can be by ours. To the other part of the objection, founded on the supposed interference (that is irreconcilableness) of one man's petitions with those of another, this answer seems to suggest itself: first, that we must take care that when we ask, we do not ask amiss;' that for instance, we ask chiefly, and in an unqualified manner, only for spiritual blessings to ourselves and others; and in doing this the prayer of one man cannot interfere with that of another, because no proportion of sanctity or virtue implored by one ob But is it not enough for such poor frail beings as we are to know, that God himself does not consider prayer as derogatory either to his wisdom or goodness? And shall we erect ourselves into judges of what is consistent with the attributes of Him before whom angels fall prostrate with self-abasement? Will he thank such defenders of his attributes, who, while they profess to reverence, scruple not to disobey him? It ought rather to be viewed as a great encourage-structs the same attainments in another. Next ment to prayer, that we are addressing a Being, who knows our wants better than we can express them, and whose preventing goodness is always ready to relieve them. Prayer seems to unite the different attributes of the Almighty for if he is indeed the God that heareth prayer, that is the best reason why to him all flesh should come.' It is objected by another class, and on the specious ground of humility too, though we do not always find the objector himself quite as humble as his plea would be thought, that it is arrogant in such insignificant beings as we are to presume to lay our petty necessities before the Great and Glorious God, who cannot be expected to condescend to the multitude of trifling and even interfering requests which are brought before him by his creatures. These and such like ob. jections arise from mean and unworthy thoughts of the Great Creator. It seems as if those who make them considered the Most High as such an one as themselves;' a Being, who can perform a certain given quantity of business, but who would be overpowered with an additional quantity. Or, at best, is it not considering the Almighty in the light, not of an infinite God, but of a great man, of a minister, or a king, who, while he superintends public and national concerns, is obliged to neglect small and individual petitions, because his hands being full he cannot spare that leisure and attention which suffice for every thing? They do not consider him as that infinitely glorious Being, who while he beholds at once all that is doing in heaven and in earth, is at the same time as attentive to the prayer of the poor destitute, as present to the sorrowful sighing of the prisoner, as if each of these forlorn creatures were individually the object of his undivided attention. These critics, who are for sparing the Supreme Being the trouble of our prayers, and, if I may so speak without profaneness, would re in asking for temporal and inferior blessings, we must qualify our petition, even though it should extend to deliverance from the severest pains, or to our very life itself, according to that example of our Saviour: Father if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.' By thus qualifying our prayer, we exercise ourselves in an act of resignation to God; we profess not to wish what will interfere with his benevolent plan, and yet we may hope by prayer to secure the blessing so far as it is consistent with it. Perhaps the reason why this objection to prayer is so strongly felt, is the too great disposition to pray for merely temporal and worldly blessings, and to desire them in the most unqualified manner, not submitting to be without them, even though the granting them should be inconsistent with the general plan of Providence. Another class continue to bring forward, as pertinaciously as if it had never been answered, the exhausted argument, that seeing God is immutable, no petitions of ours can ever change Him: that events themselves being settled in a fixed and unalterable course, and bound in a fatal necessity, it is folly to think that we can disturb the established laws of the universe, or interrupt the course of Providence by our prayers: and that it is absurd to suppose these firm decrees can be reversed by any requests of ours, Without entering into the wide and trackless field of fate and free will, from which pursuit Į am kept back equally by the most profound ignorance and the most invincible dislike, I would only observe, that these objections apply equally to all human action as well as to prayer. It may therefore with the same propriety be urged, that seeing God is immutable and his decrees unalterable, therefore our actions can produce no change in Him or in our own state. Weak as well as impious reasoning! It may be ques, tioned whether even the modern French and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, and that heart of the 'contrite in which he delights to dwell.' He knows that this inexplicable union between beings so unspeakably, so essentially different, can only be maintained by prayer: that this is the strong but secret chain which unites time with eternity, earth with heaven, man with God. German philosophers may not be prevailed upon, link of communication between 'the high and to acknowledge the existence of God, if they might make such a use of his attributes. The truth is (and it is a truth discoverable without any depth of learning) all these objections are the offspring of pride. Poor short-sighted man cannot reconcile the omniscience and decrees of God with the efficacy of prayer; and because he cannot reconcile them, he modestly concludes they are irreconcilable. How much more wisdom, as well as happiness, results from an humble Christian spirit! Such a plain practical text as, 'Draw near unto God, and he will draw near unto you,' carries more consolation, more true knowledge of his wants and their remedy to the heart of a penitent sinner, than all the tomes of casuistry,' which have puzzled the world ever since the question was first set afloat by its original propounders. And as the plain man only got up and walked, to prove there was such a thing as motion, in answer to the philosopher who in an elaborate theory denied it: so the plain Christian, when he is borne down with the assurance that there is no efficacy in prayer, requires no better argument to repel the assertion, than the good he finds in prayer itself. All the doubts proposed to him respecting God, do not so much affect him, as this one doubt respecting himself: 'Ifl regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.' For the chief doubt and difficulty of a real Christian consists, not so much of a distrust of God's ability and willingness to answer the prayer of the upright, as in a distrust of his own uprightness, as in a doubt whether he himself belongs to that description of persons to whom the promises are made, and of the quality of the prayer which he offers up. The plain Christian, as was before observed, cannot explain why it is so; but while he feels the efficacy, he is content to let the learned define it; and he will no more postpone prayer till he can produce a chain of reasoning on the manner in which he derives benefit from it, than he will postpone eating till he can give a scientific lecture on the nature of digestion; he is contented with knowing that his meat has nourished him; and he leaves to the philosopher, who may choose to defer his meal till he has elaborated his treatise, to starve in the interim. The Christian feels better than he is able to explain, that the functions of his spiritual life can no more be carried on without habitual prayer, than those of his natural life without frequent bodily nourishment. He feels renovation and strength grow out of the use of the appointed means, as necessarily in the one case as in the other. He feels that the health of his soul can no more be sustained, and its powers kept in continued vigour, by the prayers of a distant day, than his body by the aliment of a distant day. But there is one motive to the duty in question, far more constraining to the true believer than all others that can be named; more imperious than any argument on its utility, than any convictions of its efficacy, even than any experience of its consolations. Prayer is the Let the subjects of a dark fate maintain a command of God; the plain, positive, repeated sullen, or the slaves of a blind chance a hopeless injunction of the Most High, who declares, silence, but let the child of a compassionate Al-'He will be inquired of.' He will be inquired of.' This is enough to mighty Father supplicate His mercies with a humble confidence, inspired by the assurance, that 'the very hairs of his head are numbered.' Let him take comfort in that individual and minute attention, without which not a sparrow falls to the ground, as well as in that heartcheering promise; that, as 'the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous,' so are 'his ears open to their prayers.' And as a pious bishop has observed, 'Our Saviour has as it were hedged in and inclosed the Lord's prayer with these two great fences of our faith, God's willingness and his power to help us ;' the preface to it assures us of the one, which by calling God by the tender name of 'Our Father,' intimates his readiness to help his children: and the animating conclusion, Thine is the power,' rescues us from every unbelieving doubt of his ability to help us. A Christian knows, because he feels, that prayer is, though in a way to him inscrutable, the medium of connexion between God and his rational creatures: the means appointed by him to draw down his blessings upon us. The Christian knows that prayer is the appointed means of uniting two ideas, one of the highest magnificence, the other of the most profound lowliness, within the compass of imagination; namely, that it is the secure the obedience of the Christian, even secret In the meantime it is enough for the humble believer to be assured, that the Judge of all the earth is doing right; it is enough for him to be assured in that word of God' which cannot lie,' of numberless actual instances of the efficacy of prayer in obtaining blessings and averting calamities, both national and individual: it is enough for him to be convinced experimentally, of tried faith. Of this holy perseverance Job was a noble instance. Defeat and disappointment rather stimulated than stopped his prayersThough in a vehement strain of passionate eloquence he exclaims, 'I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard; I cry aloud, but there is no judgment,' yet so persuaded was he, notwithstanding, of the duty of continuing this holy by that internal evidence, which is perhaps paramount to all other evidence, the comfort he himself has received from prayer when all other comforts have failed :—and above all to end with the same motive with which we began, the only motive indeed which he requires for the performance of any duty-it is motive enough for him that thus saith the Lord. For when a serious Christian has once got a plain unequivo-importunity, that he persisted against all human cal command from his Maker on any point, he never suspends his obedience while he is amusing himself with looking about for subordinate motives of action. Instead of curiously analysing the nature of the duty, he considers how he shall best fulfil it for on these points at least it may be said without controversy that the ignorant (and here who is not ignorant?) have nothing to do with the law but to obey it? Öthers there are, who, perhaps not controverting any of the premises, yet neglect to build practical consequences on the admisssion of them, who neither denying the duty nor the efficacy of prayer, yet go on to live either in the irregular observance or the total neglect of it, as appetite, or pleasure, or business, or humour, may happen to predominate; and who by living almost without prayer, may be said to live almost without God in the world.' To such we can only say, that they little know what they lose. The time is hastening on when they will look upon those blessings as invaluable, which now they think not worth asking for; when they will bitterly regret the absence of those means and opportunities which now they either neglect or despise. O that they were wise! that they understood this! that they would consider their latter end!' There are again others, who it is to be feared having once lived in the habit of prayer, yet not having been well grounded in those principles of faith and repentance on which genuine prayer is built, have by degrees totally discontinued it. They do not find,' say they, that their affairs prosper the better or the worse; or perhaps they were unsuccessful in their affairs even before they dropped the practice, and so had no encouragement to go on.' They do not know that they had no encouragement; they do not know how much worse their affairs might have gone on, had they discontinued it sooner, or how their prayers helped to retard their ruin. Or they do not know that perhaps they asked amiss,' or that if they had obtained what they asked, they might have been far more unhappy. For a true believer never restrains prayer' because he is not certain he obtains every individual request; for he is persuaded that God, in compassion to our ignorance, sometimes in great mercy withholds what we desire, and often disappoints his most favoured children by giving them, not what they ask, but what he knows is really good for thein. The froward child, as a pious prelate observes, cries for the shining blade, which the tender parent withholds, knowing it would cut his fingers. Thus to persevere when we have not the encouragement of visible success, is an evidence * Bishop Hall. hope, till he attained to that exalted pitch of unshaken faith, by which he was enabled to break out into that sublime apostrophe, Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him.' But may we not say that there is a considerable class, who not only bring none of the objections which we have stated against the use of prayer; who are so far from rejecting, that they are exact and regular in the performance of it; who yet take it up on as low ground as is consistent with their ideas of their own safety; who while they consider prayer as an indispensable form, believe nothing of that change of heart and of those holy tempers which it is intended to produce? Many who yet adhere scrupulously to the letter, are so far from entering into the spirit of this duty, that they are strongly inclined to suspect those of hypocrisy who adopt the true scriptural views of prayer. Nay, as even the Bible may be so wrested as to be made to speak almost any language in support of almost any opinion, these persons lay hold on Scripture itself to bear them out in their own slight views of this duty; and they profess to borrow from thence the ground of that censure which they cast on the more serious Christians. Among the many passages which have been made to convey a meaning foreign to their original design, none have been seized upon with more avidity by such persons than the pointed censures of our Saviour on those who for a pretence make long prayers;' as well as on those who use vain repetitions, and think they shall be heard for much speaking.' the things here intended to be reproved, were the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the igno rance of the heathen, together with the error of all those who depended on the success of their prayers, while they imitated the deceit of the one or the folly of the other. But our Saviour never meant those severe reprehensions should cool or abridge the devotion of pious Christians, to which they do not at all apply. Now More or fewer words, however, so little constitute the true value of prayer, that there is no doubt but one of the most affecting specimens on record is the short petition of the publican, full fraught as it is with that spirit of contrition and self-abasement which is the very principle and soul of prayer. And this specimen perhaps is the best model for that sudden lifting up of the heart which we call ejaculation. But I doubt, in general, whether those few hasty words to which these frugal petitioners would stint the scanty devotions of others and themselves, will be always found ample enough to satisfy the humble penitent, who, being a sinner, has much to confess; who, hoping he is a pardoned sinner, has much to acknowledge. Such an one perhaps cannot always pour out the ful ness of his soul within the prescribed abridg 1 to ask forgiveness for the iniquity of his holy things:' and would find cause enough for humiliation every night, had he to lament the sins of his prayers only. ments. Even the sincerest Christian, when he tice; for once we are told he continued all night in prayer to God.' And again, in the most awful crisis of his life, it is expressly said, 'He prayed the third time, using the same words.'* All habits gain by exercise; of course the Christian graces gain force and vigour by being called out, and, as it were, mustered in prayer. Love, faith, and trust in the divine promises, if they were not kept alive by this stated intercourse with God, would wither and die. Prayer is also one great source and chief encourager of holiness. If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me.' mility in his own soul.* He will labour to imi- If such repetitions' as these objectors re- Prayer possesses the two-fold property of fighting and preparing the heart to receive the blessings we pray for, in case we should attain them; and of fortifying and disposing it to submit to the will of God, in case it should be his pleasure to withhold them. conclusion—' I will arise and go to my father!" Prayer, to make it accepted, requires neither genius, eloquence, nor language; but sorrow for sin, faith, and humility. It is the cry of distress, the sense of want, the abasement of contrition, the energy of gratitude. It is not an elaborate string of well arranged periods nor an * Matt. xxvi. 44.. exercise of ingenuity, nor an effort of the memory; but the devout breathing of a soul struck with a sense of its own misery, and of the infi. nite holiness of Him whom it is addressing; experimentally convinced of its own emptiness, and of the abundant fulness of God. It is the complete renunciation of self, and the entire dependence on another. It is the voice of a beggar who would be relieved; of the sinner who would be pardoned. It has nothing to offer but sin and sorrow; nothing to ask but forgiveness and acceptance; nothing to plead but the promises of the Gospel in the death of Christ. It never seeks to obtain its object by diminishing the guilt of sin, but by exalting the merits of the Saviour. it adds a divine motive to human obedience : when we pray for our enemies, it softens the savageness of war and molifies hatred into tenderness, and resentment into sorrow. And we can only learn the duty so difficult to human nature, of forgiving those who have offended us, when we bring ourselves to pray for them to Him whom we ourselves daily offend. When those who are the faithful followers of the same Divine Master pray for each other, the reciprocal intercession delightfully realizes that beauti ful idea of the communion of saints.' There is scarcely any thing which more enriches the Christian than the circulation of this holy commerce; than the comfort of believing, while he is praying for his Christian friends, that he is also reaping the benefit of their prayers for him. Some are for confining their intercessions only to the good, as if none but persons of merit were entitled to our prayers. Merit! who has it? Desert! who can plead it? in the sight of God, I mean. Who shall bring his own piety, or the piety of others, in the way of claim, before a Being of such transcendant holiness, that the heavens are not clean in his sight?' And if we wait for perfect holiness as a preliminary to prayer, when shall such erring creatures pray at all to HIM' who chargeth the angels with folly!' But as it is the effect of prayer to expand the affections as well as to sanctify them; the benevolent Christian is not satisfied to commend himself alone to the divine favour. The heart which is full of the love of God will overflow with love to its neighbour. All that are near to himself he wishes to bring near to God. He will present the whole human race as objects of divine compassion; but especially the faithful followers of Jesus Christ. Religion makes a man so liberal of soul, that he cannot endure to restrict any thing, much less divine mercies, to himself: he therefore spiritualizes the social affections, by adding intercessory to personal In closing this little work with the subject of prayer; for he knows that petitioning for others intercessory prayer, may the author be allowed is one of the best methods of exercising and en- to avail herself of the feeling it suggests to her larging our own love and charity, even if it were own heart? And while she earnestly implores not to draw down those blessings which are pro- that Being, who can make the meanest of his mised to those for whom we ask them. It is creatures instrumental to his glory, to bless this unnecessary to produce any of the numberless humble attempt to those for whom it was written, instances with which Scripture abounds, on the may she, without presumption, entreat that this efficacy of intercession in which God has pro- work of Christian charity may be reciprocal; ved the truth of his own assurance, that 'his ear and that those who peruse these pages may put was open to their cry.' I shall confine myself up a petition for her, that in the great day to to a few observations on the benefits it brings to which we are all hastening, she may not be him who offers it. When we pray for the object found to have suggested to others what she herof our dearest regard, it purifies passion, and self did not believe, or to have recommended exalts love into religion; when we pray for those what she did not desire to practice? In that with whom we have worldly intercourse, it awful day of everlasting decision, may both the smooths down the swellings of envy, and bids reader and the writer be pardoned and accepted, the tumults of anger and ambition subside: 'not for any works of righteousness which they when we pray for our country, it sanctifies pa- have done,” but through the merits of the GREAT triotism: when we pray for those in authority, | INTERCESSOR. : PRACTICAL PIETY, OR THE INFLUENCE OF THE RELIGION OF THE HEART ON THE CONDUCT OF THE LIFE. The fear of God begins with the Heart, and purifies and rectifies it; and from the Heart, thus rectified, grows a conformity in the Life, the Words, and the Actions.-Sir Matthew Hale's Contemplations. PREFACE. An eminent professor of our own time modestly declared that he taught chemistry in order that he might learn it. The writer of the following pages might, with far more justice, offer a |